Technology

37745 readers

218 users here now

A nice place to discuss rumors, happenings, innovations, and challenges in the technology sphere. We also welcome discussions on the intersections of technology and society. If it’s technological news or discussion of technology, it probably belongs here.

Remember the overriding ethos on Beehaw: Be(e) Nice. Each user you encounter here is a person, and should be treated with kindness (even if they’re wrong, or use a Linux distro you don’t like). Personal attacks will not be tolerated.

Subcommunities on Beehaw:

This community's icon was made by Aaron Schneider, under the CC-BY-NC-SA 4.0 license.

founded 2 years ago

MODERATORS

alyaza@beehaw.org

TheRtRevKaiser@beehaw.org

gyrfalcon@beehaw.org

rs5th@beehaw.org

coldredlight@beehaw.org

Los@beehaw.org

SemioticStandard@beehaw.org

TheRtRevKaiser@kbin.social

remington@beehaw.org

115

Cancel Amazon Prime [2021] (archive.ph)

submitted 1 year ago by trashhalo@beehaw.org to c/technology@beehaw.org

101 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Amazon Prime is a remarkable success but also dystopian. It has made convenience and speed the norm, habituating consumers to buy more products. Prime's flywheel effect - where more customers lead to more data and scale which attracts more customers - has fueled Amazon's dominance. Prime subscribers spend twice as much and Amazon's value has multiplied 97 times since 2005. While canceling Prime may not hurt Amazon, it can benefit local businesses by gaining a new customer. However, Prime has rewired how people think about what is possible to obtain and how fast, making a Prime-free life unimaginable for many.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] middlemuddle@beehaw.org 9 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Do you need Prime for that? I'm not in your same situation, but I used to be very reliant on Prime shipping. Since I cancelled Prime, I still sometimes buy stuff from Amazon, but I realized I don't have a need to get things so rapidly. Free shipping is still an option on most items, it just takes a few more days. When they're small items that don't qualify for free shipping, then I just add it to my cart and wait until I have something else to add that makes it cross that free shipping threshold. And I also generally don't feel the need to use Amazon as much since so many other companies offer free shipping these days.

In my circle, I've seen that people are just so expectant of rapid shipping, but they don't actually need it. I've learned how instant gratification isn't actually valuable to me, but I know that's difficult for a lot of people to accept.

[–] lorez@lemm.ee 1 points 1 year ago

I mean, I don't order stuff every day but when I do it's cos I need it fast. I use Prime for games and videos too. I dunno about the rest of the planet but here in Italy, especially in a small 65k souls town, the situation is not so good.

[–] Snipe_AT@lemmy.atay.dev 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Our conversation on a different post made me check your post history. And now this post has me considering canceling Amazon Prime. Ripple effects are weird.

[–] middlemuddle@beehaw.org 1 points 1 year ago

Haha, that's a fun little coincidence. Benefits of the federated communities being smaller for the time being.